UC-NGI-CZ-VIII

From EGI Knowledge Base

Use Case title: Application group "grid guru" training and support

Short description: A group of scientists uses local computational resources regularly, and they want to join grid to leverage its potential. However, a realistic learning curve is still too steep, most of these people cannot afford spending their time learning how to use grid tools. On the other hand, there are few people in the group, more experienced in computer science, who are still familiar with the needs of these users, while being capable, willing, and ideally paid for becoming "grid gurus" of the group.

However, even for these people it is rather difficult to keep pace with development of the grid technology, and to be aware of all available functionality of grid services and map it to the needs of their group. Therefore they easily fall into the trap of reinventing the wheel, providing their custom solution to a problem which has been already addressed by some advanced grid services.

These "gurus" form a special category from the point of support and training. As they hold the potential to bring their communities to the grid, and they also affect how the grid is perceived by the true end-users, the national and international grid infrastructure should establish and maintain collaboration with these people actively, offer them specific training opportunities etc.

Actors involved: local research community, VO operator, NGI operator